Edam, to obtain the necessary light output and obtain both a spotlamp pencil beam and a floodlamp wide beam simultaneously these top end head torches use a multiple array of hyperbright L.E.D.s - some will be lensed as spotlamps and the remainder as floodlamps. In the case of the Petzl Ultra it is 6x 3W, the Hope Vision 4 uses 4x 3 or 5W. Thus you are looking at a power consumption of 12 - 20 W. Standard dry cell batteries to supply this demand would be prohibitively heavy and very short lived, hence both of these manufacturers resort to using Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) batteries which are still in their infancy ( relatively speaking) and require very careful recharging - hence a fairly sophisticated charger which is included in the price of the headtorch. As you will read in any article regarding the development of electric cars, it is the modern, lightweight re-chargeable battery systems and their development that are the big cost factor. On top of this, the manufacturers and retailers are in business to make a profit. So you could easily be paying double what it actually costs to manufacture the article. In the case of Hope, with its machined aluminium case, they probably have to re-coup a multi million pound investment in machine tools, to produce an item that has a relatively limited market.
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